Printers have become increasingly commonplace in homes, businesses, and elsewhere throughout the world. Conventional printers allow users to generate paper copies of documents (e.g., supplied to the printer by a computer), and some also allow users to make copies of already generated paper documents.
Currently, in order for a computer to print documents on a printer, the computer is typically required to have a printer-specific set of instructions that define how the computer is to communicate with the printer. The set of printer-specific instructions for a particular printer is commonly referred to as a “driver” for that printer. The driver for a printer also typically allows the user of the computer to set a wide variety of printer parameters (e.g., print quality, number of pages to print, etc.). However, the use of such drivers is problematic because the computer is usually required to have such a driver for each printer at which it desires to print documents. This requires the user to install multiple drivers (one per printer), which can be burdensome to the user. For example, a person taking his or her portable computer out of his or her office for a meeting at another location and desiring to print documents on a printer at that location is required to have the proper driver(s) for that printer installed on his or her portable computer in order to print to that printer. This results in a user-unfriendly situation as the user must find some way to obtain the necessary drivers in order to print documents at that location.
The generation and usage of workflows for processing data on a printing device described herein helps solves these problems.